Boris Johnson: 'Gandhi was wrong'

Do you like my hyperbolic headline? Please forgive me for it. After all, it is a Friday afternoon. That said, Boris did utter those precise words earlier this week when addressing the annual MIPIM developers' trade fair in Cannes. His point was that Gandhi had said that India's future lay in its villages, when it has turned out the the future of India and indeed the rest of the world "lies in cities."

Boris did, however, qualify this by restating his ambition to "put the village back into the city" - a line he first used at January's Mayor's Question Time and repeated that same evening at his public meeting in Ealing on transport issues. Expect to hear further reprises of this theme in the interminable - and probably rather nasty - mayoral campaign months to come. Here's Boris's speech in full.

A curiosity about the Citigroup analysis to which Boris refers is that, according to the Telegraph's report, London's predicted mega-growth by the middle of the next decade will happen "despite the fact that the size of its population is not expected to grow."

That's not what I'd heard and it's not what Boris has been hearing either - mayoral transport, planning and housing polices all assume an expansion of London's population from the current seven-and-three-quarter to million to nearly nine million by 2031 (see, for example, page 15 here). Perhaps we're destined to put on a tremendous population spurt from 2026. Don't press me on the details.

The moment from the speech that grabs me most is when Boris speaks of the capital's "luscious opportunities for development" and waves that "opportunity areas" document. I'm assuming it aggregates, elaborates on and sells, sells, sells the areas set out in the draft replacement London Plan from page 47 (City Hall is checking for me).

This wooing of property developers fills me with a sort of helpless gloom. Heaven knows London needs a lot more homes - and bigger ones too - and very little public money is going to be available to help fund the task. But the greatest demand is for homes that people on low and average incomes can actually afford. Will they be the MIPIM set's priority? How much can any Mayor do - Boris, Ken or anyone else - to ensure that future housing supply meets London's social and, indeed, economic needs?